Another Smile
by Vi-Violence
Summary: After the heart stops beating, it takes approximately 10 minutes for the brain to die from oxygen deprivation. As a doctor, Law is well aware of this. (Law decides to make a second try of getting a marine to help Corazon).
1. If you love the caged bird

The boys scream cut short nearly as soon as it cut through the silence, small mottled hands stifling back his cries.

_No, nonononono-Cora-san! You can't, please no you can't leave me too..._

There had been so much blood, leaking into the snow, turning it red, and that was before, before Doflamingo had- no, can't think about that, can't think about that or all reason will be lost and Cora-sans sacrifice will have been for nothing he scolded himself as he stumbled and fell into the snow, the cold doing little too shock hm out of his stupor. Cold... one of the early sympoms of exsaunguation, followed by unconsciousness, then death.

_Wait... unconsciousness_, **then** _death_! Shooting upright Law gasped for breath as he stared blankly into the frozen wasteland surrounding him, thoughts a panicked whirlwind.

Cora-san could still be alive! Stumbling to his feet he looked around in vauge desperation, he could probably get back to him, Doflamino would have left the island by now, but even so, what could he possibly do? With the exeption of his new devil fruit he had nothing in the way of tools or supplies, and he had no idea how to use the thing anyways, so he might as well not even have **that**.

Suddenly, he was broken from his musings as he noticed movement in the distance, squinting slightly in an effort to clearly make out the figure he sucked in a sharp breath as it came into focus,_ a marine_ he thought with a grimace, making to hide from the figure when a thought struck him still, _Cora-san is one too,_ he glanced back_ Vergo was working for him,_ but surely it would be ridiculous for there to be more than one spy, wouldn't it?

_Would I ever be able to forgive myself if I passed up a chance to save him?_

"Hey! Help!" he screamed, taking off at run towards the marine who turned to face him as he approached, a woman, eh? That wasn't very common, was it?

"You gotta help him!" he exclaimed as he came to a sudden stop a short distance from her, just enough to prevent her from being ably to clearly see his skin, recognize the disease in his skin.

"What?! Help who? What are you even doing here kid?!" she asked approaching

"The man! That one in the pink coat shot him! I think he"s dying!" he spoke quickly, brushing aside the qustions and turning slightly away from her in to point back towards the direction where Cora-san lay.

"What?!" She exclaimed, hand going to pull out a den den from a pouch at her waist,

"Hurry! This way!" He shouted not giving a chance for questions he didn't want to answer, turning and running in the direction of his savior, the marine woman hot on his heels, shouting directions and requests for medical aid into the snail as she did so.

_Thank every spirit of the sea, this one might **actually** help!_

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

His scream was caught back in his throat for the second time that day, this time due to lack of breath once Corazon came into view.

_There's so much blood,_ was there really any chance of him still being alive? Desperately he scrambled forwards, checking for a pulse, dimmly aware of the marine swearing softly behind him, _please, he's all I have left.._

There! slow, yet steady beneath his fingers, for a moment it was all he his world consisted of, that assurance that he wasn't alone (again), that the only person in the world that loved him wasn't gone, was still there. Slowly, he became aware of the marine who had settled on the oposite side of the large man from him.

"Hey, mister can you hear me? Mister? Hey kid, you know his name?" She asked, hands occupied with checking injuries, no longer solely focused on him, good, Cora-san took precidence and as long as she wasn't looking at him she was less likely to notice anything about him.

Frozen for a moment at being addressed, he quickly found his voice again

"Um, I think he said Rosi-something, and something about being a marine? ...I think that was why the pink man shot him..."

"**Rosinante**?!" came a new voice from the den-den, which was sitting beside Corazon's shoulder, forgotten until that moment.

"You know him Tsuru-san?" asked the stunned marine, Law caught himself sympathizing.

"Know him? I watched that boy grow up! He's Sengoku's boy!'" Law could only watch as instructions where shouted over the den den, listening with a vauge sense of shell shock. _Sengoku's boy._.. it had been clear listening to the two speak to each other that there had been real affection in their relationship, it was clrear that Corazon (Rosinante?) would be well cared for with these people, clear that they cared about him. _After all, he is one of them._

He shifted, uncomfortable with the thoughts running through his head. It all made sense, he had known that the brothers had been separated for fourteen years, had only been reunited one year before he had joined the family, knew that the blond was now twenty-six, meaning that he and Doflamingo had parted ways when he would have been eight years old. He couldn't remember a single occasion when they had spoken of their parents, or any other family for that matter.

Taking that together with what he had learned just that day, it made sense... he could see it, a happy childhood for the older man, under the close watch of some of the marine's higher ranking. A found family with a second father, just like he had become for Law. A family he had been willing to cut himself off from, as a consequence of simply _**helping**_ Law, a family that would clearly miss him, if the agitated tones coming from the den-den were any indication.

"Hey kid, you okay?" He looked up to find that he was once again the subject of the woman's focus, his paranoia reminding him that it was most likely only a matter of time before she noticed the discoleration of his skin... only a matter of time before his window of escape was closed completly. He let his eyes fall to the ground, to the man that had become his caretaker, who had sacrificed so much for him, before coming to a decision, steeling his nerves as he looked the woman into eye.

"I, um... I have'ta pee" he muttered, shifting some more to make his embarrassed kid act as convincing as possible while starting to edge backwards.

"Oh! uh.." the woman was now glancing around awkwardly, like if she looked hard enough a restroom would magically appear among the snow drifts.

"I'll be right back! No peaking!" he shouted abruptly, before darting behind a tall snow drift ignoring the response that of coarse she wouldn't peak. Waiting until he was out of sight, then circling around and taking off at a dead run in the direction of the secluded area where the two had left their small boat earlier that day, _had it really only been one day?_

"Ah, hah..." he found himself choking back his cries again, this time with out the aid of his caretakers devil fruit to give him safety, needing to get as far as possible before the marine realized anything, hopefully she would be preoccupied with taking care of Corazon. Tears blurred his sight before he roughly brushed them away, pushing himself to run faster.

_I'm sorry Cora-san, but I love you too, so..._

_I'm letting you go._


	2. And should the bird return

The formatting when I copy and paste this in is s nightmare, for future reference if the formatting goes wonky when I post, you can find the same chapter on ao3 under the same title.

XxXxX

He woke up too late.

Too late to meet up with Law at any rate, which was really the only thing that mattered. Apparently he had been injured badly enough that he had been uncunconscious for the better part of a month, occasionally fading into awarness in brief snaches that he didn't truely remember. These moments worried him, the possiblity that he might have said something damming sending tendrils of ice down his spine. But an enthusastic Sengoku had informed him that this was the first time he had been coherent, so that consern at least was laid the rest. Still though, the fact that Law wouldn't have waited more than a week at the neighboring island as they had agreed was the only thing he could focus on as Sengoku was telling him something about a child finding him...

"What? A child? On minion!" he exclaimed, nearly launching himself out of the hospital bed _Law would not be pleased._ Slightly startled, Sengoku recovered himself and responded.

"Yes, apparently a young boy witnessed Doflamingo shoot you, he helped one of Tsuru's officers find you"

"And where is he now?" Rociante cut in_, if it had been Law..._

"Thats just it actually, apparently after leading her to you, he claimed that he had to relieve himself and then vanished. Once you were stabilized Tsuru had a seaarch party sweep the island for him, but there was no trace of him." Of coarse not, Law would avoid a marine search party with everything he had.

"What about Doffy? Could he hav-"

"No, he was alreaady off the island by that point, the the boy would have had the leave the island by some other means..." he trailed off, giving his adoptive son a suspicious look.

"I dont suppose you know anything about him? Did you see him before you were injured?"

".. I dont remember." _Sorry Sengoku-san, but making sure Law's safe comes first.._

"You don't-"

"It's a blur, I'm not even completely sure how I wound up on Minion, I think it had something to do with preventing Doffy from getting the Op-Op no mi, but I can't remember any of the details." Speaking quickly, he spun together a story holding as much of the truth as possible without endangering himself or his boy, piecing together as many older details he had on the family as possible, _probably best to make it look like the memory loss is just about recent stuff, maybe just the last six months or so..._ he mused, focused on how best to protect the the two of them, _probably shouldn't leave Vergo out though_..

"Oh, I do remember one thing though!"

"What what is it?!" was the older man's hopeful responce.

"Vergo, the first Corazon! He was there! ...I think he might have given me a good knock to the head actually..."

"Vergo! But, I- I gave him that assignment, you mean if I hadn't you might not have been hurt like this?!" He cried, sticken.

Heart sinking at his words causing the man such clear distress, Rociante hastened to placate the other.

"You couldn't have known... besides this puts the ball in our court." A grin slowly stretched across his face, accentuating his tattoos.

"So, he was there on your assignment huh? I have an idea." He murmured slyly.

The elder of the two quickly perked up at that, hopeful at the chance to make something out of his blunder, and gestured for him to continue.

"Well, for starters I'm going to need you to sing me his praises." He informed his father figure with a sly smirk at the dumbfounded expression he received in responce, quickly continuing before the other had the chance to speak.

"After all, poor amnesiac me will be only to happy to meet the man his father figure speaks so well of!" He continued, practically purring at the idea of how he would use the man who had beaten him and Law so mercilessly.

"After all," he continued in a more serious tone, "if we were to simply arrest him then Doffy could replace him and we wouldn't know who, this way we can control what information Doffy gets fed."

"I'll have to see if I can't confide in him of my distress over your memory loss without overplaying my hand." he mused, the two men sharing a conspiratorial smirk, the father son resembalance between them unmistakable for once.

After that things fell into place quickly, gossip spread as it always will amongst military ranks, and Rocinante was soon recieving all manner of get well soon gifts, as soon as he was able to leave his bed the blond pled his case to return to Minion,

"It might help bring something back, besides, I think I left my favorite sweater in the boat I took there, I want to see if I can't find it, and maybe that kid..."

"The one that found you? I suppose we never did find any trace of him..."

"Perhaps he lives on the next island over, Swallow was rather close wasn't it? Maybe he had a fishing boat or something, I just... I want to check is all." He trailed off, giving a small shrug. He really did want that sweater back, if only to have something besides the bloodied clothes he'd been recovered in to remember his time with Law by, and while he knew that odds were slimmier than slim that Law would still be in the area, he had to look, just in case.

In the end there was no trace of his things or his boy on Minion, Swallow however was another story, his heart had nearly stoped in his chest when he found the wreckage of the small boat he had traveled to Minion in along with Law washed up on Swallows shore, some distance from the civilisation, only truly feeling able to breath again after his frenzied seach turned up the remains of a camp not far off, only then turning his search towards the town. After a short while his efforts of a few discreet questions and a liberal amount of eves dropping were rewarded with a few vague recollections of a child with a spotted hat, only made memorable for having apparetly made off with a pair of the islands resident trouble makers.

_Thank god, you're alright, you're not alone, did you make some friends Law? _

_I want see you again,_

_I guess that even if I'm back among Marine ranks, at the end of the day Law, _

_I'm yours to keep._


End file.
